Random ramblings about music I make and enjoy. I play some guitar and sing a bit. I record using Linux. I may sometimes blog about other stuff that interests me, but that's more likely to be direct to G+

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Wednesday, 20 November 2013

I wrote some thoughts about building a new PC six months ago. I still haven't pulled the trigger, although I did get an SSD for the current PC. I need to re-install that to make it operational again.

I've just been putting together a shopping list of components. This ought to give me a big performance boost, mainly due to the CPU.

AMD APU A10 6700 4.3GHz: Nearly double the clock speed of the current unit and double the cores. I don't really want to have to get a separate graphics card. This should be enough for the few simple games I might play. It's a 65W TDP model, which I assume means it will need less cooling than the 100W models. From what I've read Linux has support for the graphics, but there's not a huge amount of information on this

Biostar Hi-Fi A85W Socket FM2: Just a generic ATX motherboard with the PCI slots I need for my audio interface. I don't need much from the motherboard. I've used smaller boards before, but they can be fiddly to work on

Corsair 8GB DDR3 1866Mhz: 8GB is probably enough for now. Not going for anything too fancy as I don't plan to overclock

be quiet! PURE POWER L8 400W: 400W is probably more than enough. I mainly need quietness

Fractal Design Define R4: A friend has this case. It has some sound-deadening material in it. It will be under my desk, so size is not a major issue

SANDISK ULTRA PLUS SSD 128GB: This will be the boot drive

Seagate 2TB BARRACUDA 3.5" SATA-III: The data drive. That's far more than I have now

I've not settled on a CPU cooler. Not seeing too many that say they work on the FM2 socket. Looking for something up to £25. Any suggestions?

Audio interface and DVD will be moved from the old PC

That lot comes in at around £500. Making it totally silent could add around £100 for a better power supply and cooler. Some of these parts have got cheaper since I looked a few months back. I probably won't be buying anything until the new year, but they may get even cheaper.

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Welcome to Studio Spoon

This site is about music. I'm an amateur guitarist who messes around with recording using the Linux operating system. I'll be writing about anything in that area that takes my fancy. I'm by no means an expert on recording or Linux, but I'll document what I do in the hope that it's helpful to someone. I welcome any comments and suggestions.